Field of the Invention and Related Art Statement
The present invention relates to an electric connector comprising a housing made of electrically insulating material and having a plurality of cavities for receiving a plurality of terminals each having an electric wire connected thereto, and a terminal retaining member made of electrically insulating material and having a plurality of holes through which the electrical wires are extended outwardly, said terminal retaining member being detachably coupled with a rear end of the housing.
In a known electric connector, in order to prevent terminals from being removed from the connector the terminal has a resilient locking tongue formed integrally therewith and the housing has a projection formed on an inner surface of each cavity. When the terminal is inserted into the cavity of the housing, the resilient locking tongue is passed beyond the projection. After the terminal has been inserted into the cavity, the locking tongue is engaged with the projection so that the terminal is retained in the cavity. However, in the known electric connector, the locking tongue might be bent or deformed permanently during the assembling and handling, and thus the engagement between the locking tongue and the projection might be insufficient and the terminal might be removed from the housing. In order to avoid such a drawback, there has been proposed an electric connector in which after terminals have been inserted into cavities of the housing, a terminal retaining member is detachably secured to a rear end of the housing. In case of securing the terminal retaining member to the housing, the wires connected to respective terminals contained in the housing have to be inserted into respective slits which are formed in an end surface of the terminal retaining member in a comb-shape. After the terminal retaining member has been coupled with the housing, the terminal could not be removed from the housing, because rear ends of the terminals are engaged with finger-like edges defining the slits. However, in such a known connector, an operation for inserting the wires into the slits of the terminal retaining member is very cumbersome and time consuming, because the wires must be inserted into corresponding slits. Therefore, the cost of assembling the known connector is liable to be quite expensive.